Flight Over NE Second Avenue

Joseph’s pigeons did not like the smell of the new asphalt they were pouring for the five-story apartment building across the street. They sat on the wooden slats of their coop, their grey heads tucked into their shoulders, their eyes like small, red beads of glass. Joseph had built the coop thirty years ago from cedar pallets he had stolen from the docks, staining it with oil to keep the dry-wood termites from eating the legs. Now, the shadow of the concrete crane reached his small garden by three in the afternoon, cooling his pepper plants and his thyme before their time.

He opened the wire latch with a loop of copper wire, releasing the white cock he had named General. The bird did not fly high; it circled twice over the rusty tin roof of the botánica next door, then settled on the telephone wire where three mourning doves were already preening their feathers. Joseph threw a handful of dry corn onto the dirty grass, but the birds were too restless to eat. They could feel the vibrations of the pile-driver through their small feet, a rhythmic, iron thud that went deep into the limestone beneath the soil, shaking the cistern where the rainwater collected.

His grandson, Louis, came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of rice and black beans, his fingers smelling of the lavender soap his mother used for her laundry. He sat on the bench beside Joseph, his eyes on the glass tower that was rising like an iceberg at the end of the block. Joseph watched the General preen his wing, his white feathers yellowed by the diesel soot that blew from the construction site. When the building was finished, there would be no more salt breeze from the bay, only the hot, dead air trapped between the tall walls of concrete and glass.